Remember the dark age four years ago when you had to pay a lot of money to a scalper if you wanted to get a new GPU? It’s increasingly looking like the stock that’s ready for the RTX 5000-series launch might not be enough for everyone, so don’t be surprised if scalpers pop up again out of nowhere.

NVIDIA has confirmed expectations of “significant demand” for the $999 RTX 5080 and $1,999 RTX 5090, with the potential for immediate stock-outs. These concerns are also seemingly echoed by partners like MSI, which has delayed shipments of its RTX 5090 cards until February 6, and prebuilt PC maker PowerGPU, which predicts the 5090 launch will have the worst availability in recent memory, potentially lasting for the first three months.

The issue appears to be global, too. For one, Zotac Korea is suggesting mid-February shipments, while UK retailer Overclockers is reporting extremely limited stock of both cards. The outlook all around is increasingly gleam and reminds us a lot of the RTX 3000-series launch. As a reminder, these cards were released in late 2020, in the middle of the worst point of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the shortage ultimately lasted a solid couple of years. Scalpers made a fortune re-selling GPUs, and retailers like Newegg set up lottery-like systems to give users a chance at buying GPUs at retail prices.

here was a larger chip shortage affecting the amount of actual GPUs that could be produced and shipped out, and there was also significantly increased demand due to NVIDIA’s new GPUs actually being great for cryptocurrency mining. Ethereum, the currency that was being mined, has since converted to a proof-of-stake model and essentially killed miners’ demand for GPUs, so it’s not what’s driving demand for RTX 5000 GPUs.

It’s too early to tell whether this shortage will be nearly as bad as that one, but if it actually lasts three months, scalpers are going to demand absolutely crazy prices for these cards. It’s also not known if this will affect the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti, which are the cheapest cards in the range. Chances are that demand for these will be crazy high, too, and might even be higher than demand for the more expensive ones, but it’s not clear if the assembly lines are better prepared for that demand.

Source: Gizmodo